other speaker, yet, his first attempts on the Bema, as is well known, failed utterly. He was laughed at, hissed, hooted off, not once, but repeatedly-and that too, for defects, many of which would pass unobserved-certainly (in a man of his talent) with perfect impunity-in any modern assembly. For instance, the author of the Lives of the Ten Orators, sometimes ascribed to Plutarch, tells us, that after his first discomtiture, he devoted himself to study, with greater determination and perseverance than ever. Yet, on his re-appearance in public, the cavilling and critical Demus quarrelled with him again. One instance is mentioned by that writer. The orator undertook to pronounce Axλniós with the acute accent on the ", which never failed to call forth a terrible explosion of popular indignation and disgust. So rigorous was an Attic assembly-and such a painful attention even to the most minute excellencies of style, did they exact from the sublimest, and, ultimately, the most triumphant of their orators!

But this wonderful refinement belonged to the wildest democracy that ever existed-a tumultuary and excitable mob, wayward, fitful and refractory, alternately slave and tyrant— now a passive instrument of the demagogue, then "like a dev'lish engine back recoiling" upon the rash hand that aspired to direct it. It was a troubled ocean that knew no rest-moved by every sudden impulse, blown about by every wind of doctrine, agitated, in short, by all the elements of commotion, disorder and excess.

-Rumour next, and Chance

And Tumult and Confusion all embroiled,
And Discord with a thousand various mouths.

Well might an orator prepare for such a scene by declaiming upon the shore of the stormy deep! While his ambition was stimulated to the highest pitch by the confident expectation that his eloquence, if it were of a high order, would be rewarded with complete success over so susceptible an audience, there were perils, on the other hand, always impending over him, that made his anxiety to prepare himself for the trial, still more intense and absorbing. The demagogue was in some degree responsible for events, and might be said to legislate with a halter about his neck. Every debate on an important measure was, for this reason, an affair of life and death to those engaged in it. A Turkish vizier is not more deeply in

πολλάκις ἐπυροβήθη After this, he put himself again to school to Eubulides, • Milesian Dialectician, and at length succeeded.

terested in the success of his policy and conduct, than were the Athenian orators. We may judge what were the comforts of such an existence-what "joy ambition found" amidst the most splendid triumphs of the Bema-from the experience of Demosthenes himself, who declared in the bitterness of his spirit, that had he his life to live over, and there were only two roads before him, the one leading to the public assembly, and the other to instant destruction, he would, without hesitation, pursue the latter. Independently, however, of this deep and perilous responsibility, the control of the audience over the speaker was perpetually discovered in matters of minor importance. At times, they would not hear him at all-at other times, they compelled him to omit a disagreeable topic-at other times again, they broke in upon his arrangement, and made him begin where they pleased. In his oration against Ctesiphon, Eschynes exhorts them not to let Demosthenes have his own way in the argument, for that if they did, he would infallibly take advantage of the liberty to divert them from the subject, as was his custom, and hurry away their feelings with a torrent of irrelevant declamation. The great orator opens his reply with a protest against such an interference, so emphatic and solemn, as to shew he had great reason to dread it. This anxiety about being heard, appears in all his speeches-in the course of which, he frequently begs them not to disturb him with their clamours until they have heard him out. The orators were particularly put to it for time-for their impatient auditors restricted them in that particular as much as possible. "Stop the water," cries the speaker, when the scribe is about reading the testimony. "If you have any reply to make to this argument," they sometimes say to their adversaries, "come up and make it now, in my allowance of water." The pregnant brevity-a great beauty-of Lysias, is accounted for by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, by the necessity of conforming his speech to the scanty contents of the clepsydra* So too, one of the most remarkable things in the Philippics of Demosthenes, is their conciseness; three or four of them put together would not make up an average congressional harangue, de laná caprina.

Cicero had to address a far more patient audience. The character of the Romans was grave and saturnine-their manners decorous and reserved. The influence of established bienséances-of a powerful and haughty aristocracy-of a nice and complicated government of checks and balances, in which

* Jud. de Lys. c. 5.

the democratic element was, except on extraordinary occasions, comparatively kept down-all tended to the same result. We have seen that a senator might, if he pleased, speak all day, and until the third Consulship of Pompey, no limit was set to the length of forensic pleadings.

Now, let any one consider the influence which the character of an audience has upon the speaker. Cicero accounts for the difference between the Attic and the Asiatic style by this single cause.* In this respect, therefore, Demosthenes enjoyed a prodigious advantage over his only rival. Hume, indeed, thinks otherwise. He represents the Greek orator as having created his own audience. But that is clearly a mistake. What he alleges as a proof of it, is altogether insufficient, viz. that Gorgias had many admirers in his day: for in the first place, we have positive evidence that the faults of that orator were ridiculed; and, secondly, his merits must have been very great, since Plato, a witness above all exception, was very much addicted to the study of his writings.‡

3. The foregoing remarks have prepared us to consider the third circumstance which contributed to make the style of Demosthenes more perfect than that of Cicero, without supposing in him any superiority in genius. This was, that the occasions on which he spoke his greatest harangues, were more momentous and impressive. Mr. Dunlop, indeed, is of a contrary opinion. "Cicero," he thinks, "had a wider, and, perhaps, more beautiful field, in which to expatiate and display his powers. The wide extent of the Roman empire, the striking vices and virtues of its citizens, the memorable events of its history, supplied an endless variety of great and interesting topics; whereas, many of the orations of Demosthenes are on subjects unworthy of his talents." This remark is just, as applied to the forensic speeches of the Greek orator in private causes; with which, few persons besides Hellenists, are acquainted; but it certainly is not true of the Philippics and the other public harangues, and it is by these alone that we judge him. The Bar does not admit of the most sublime eloquence; and most of Cicero's master-pieces were delivered in the Forum. This is an important consideration. The highest order of eloquence can no more be displayed except on occasions calculated to shake and to agitate the human soul, than heroic courage, which emanates from the same source, and is nearer akin to it than is commonly

* Omnes qui probari volunt, voluntatem eorum qui audiunt intuentur, ad eamque et ad eorum arbitrium et nutum totos se fingunt et accommodant.—Brut. sub cale. Longin. of the Sublime, c. 3. ‡ Dion. Hal. Epist. ad Cn. Pom.

thought-and when those occasions do take place, they call "forth an oratory such as the babbling rhetoricians, or clever debaters, commonly considered as eloquent men, cannot even conceive. It is when a universal consternation prevails-when even the brave are mute with astonishment, and "each in other's countenance reads signs of his own dismay," that he who stands forth unmoved, and points out the means of deliverance, or leads the way to a noble self-devotion to honour and duty, is eloquent even without the aid of laboured language. This is the true account of Patrick Henry's reputation. "Whatever others do, I'll fight," was, under the circumstances, as sublime as the qu'il mourut of the old Horace. A single sentence of this kind produces a transport of admiration: what must be the effect of a whole speech delivered in such a strain, and replete with all the other perfections of oratory? Let us take another example. Bossuet was a man of sublime genius, and the subjects of his Funeral Orations were such as Mr. Dunlop conceives to be best adapted to call forth the talents of an orator. Yet compare any thing he has done in that kind, with the famous passage in a discourse of Masillon, about the fewness of the elect-delivered, it may be, before a far less august assembly, and with none of the pomp and circumstance of this world to set off the occasion to advantage. How tame and cold, and, therefore, feeble, are the sonorous periods which celebrate inurned greatness, and moralize upon its emptiness and vanity, by the side of that holy fervour, that divine enthusiasm, that truly religious earnestness and sincerity, and what is the consequence of all these, that heart-searching and alarming power with which the herald of salvation rouses up his agitated audience, as with the trump of doom! And suppose Massillon to have delivered such a discourse, when the face of the earth had just been swept by a whirlwind, or its foundations shaken by an earthquake, or when the pestilence was walking abroad at noon-day, or men were perishing by famine-no matter how humble or obscure his audience with how much more real eloquence would he have spoken, with how much more effect would he have been heard, than if he were addressing all the kings of the earth on a subject that did not so deeply awaken their bosoms! Now, the occasions on which Cicero spoke, were generally more imposing than interesting-more fitted to strike the imaginations of men, than to agitate and arouse their feelings. He never rose to speak in the Senate or the Comitia, amidst such universal and such intense excitement as prevailed in the Athenian assembly, on an occasion eternized by the eloquence of Demosthenes. We allude to the passage in the

oration for the crown, so much commended by the ancient critics, beginning Eorépa μev yàgv, &c. The news that Philip, violating all his engagements, had suddenly pounced upon Elatea-the key of Phocis and Bæotia-and might be expected to appear before the walls of Athens in a few days, was brought thither in the evening. In a moment the whole city was in such a state of alarm that men seemed bereft of their senses. On the morrow, by the break of day, the Senate of Five Hundred was convened, and at the same time, the people crowded into the Assembly, anxiously waiting for the result of its deliberations. At length the Senate makes its appearance-the Prytanes report the intelligence that had been brought-the bearer of these dreadful tidings himself is produced, and made to recite them again. Then the crier calls aloud in the usual formula, "does any one wish to speak," but none answered to the call. It is repeated over and over again-and still, though all the magistrates and orators are present, not one of them has the courage to come forward-not one of them seems "to hear the common voice of his country imploring his counsel and assistance.' It was at such a juncture that Demosthenes ascended the Bema, and prevailed upon them to adopt those measures which led to the alliance with Thebes, and to the last great struggle for the liberties of Greece at Cheronea. These are the occasions that create orators of the sublime and heroic stamp-and, acccordingly, the heart of man hath not conceived-the lips of a prophet never uttered more rapturous and godlike eloquence, than that of Demosthenes in the oration just mentioned, where he dwells upon this memorable scene. He recites a part of his speech and the decree which it persuaded the people to pass-and which, if it was longer than the Iliad, as Eschynes declares it was, fell nothing short of it in sublimity-without any rhetorical pomp and embellishment, (for they would have been out of place and disgusting) but breathing the lofty soul, the sacred love of country, "the unconquerable will and courage never to submit or yield," the generous shame that forbids the children of patriots and heroes to stain their glorious escutcheon with a recreant's baseness.* It is true this occasion was an extraordinary one even in the oratorical career of Demosthenes. But it was only the end and consummation, so to speak, of all the others. He had been all along anticipating and predicting such a crisis, and hence the

Theopompus (apud Plutarch) paints in strong colours the effects produced on the Thebans by a similar oration of Demosthenes, delivered before them soon after, to persuade them to the alliance. His eloquence made them forget fear, and policy, and favour, ενθουσιῶντας υπο σε λόγε πρὸς ΤΟ ΚΑΛΟΝ.